The Boy
by nightfury123
Summary: The boy has the gift- of dragon-taming. But the Dragon Furious has looked into the future, and he knows that he will use it for evil, and will stop at nothing to exterminate the boy, and ensure that he is not the end of the dragons...
1. Furious's Summoning

****This was originally planned to be a oneshot, and so I wrote it intending for it to have only one chapter...** Sorry that this first chapter is so short...**

* * *

Far away, somewhere in the Viking archipelago, a dragon, as huge and as blue as the sea from which it came from, is lying in a cave, sleeping.  
Suddenly, it uncurls itself, and roars; a mighty one, summoning all the dragons in his army to the cave.  
The Sea Dragon's second-in-command, a Thunderer, walks up to its leader slowly.  
'My lord Furious...' it stammers.  
'Yes?' the dragon which it is addressing, growls.  
'Why have you summoned us here?'  
'You know why, Thunderer.' Furious replies.  
'But, my lord, the boy does not know how to use his gift-'  
'He does,' snaps Furious, 'and I have been looking into the future. I know, that the boy will use his gift for evil, just as the others who possessed it have.'  
'He may not, my lord-'  
At this, Furious turns around to face his second-in-command, and growls dangerously.  
'I chose you as my second-in-command, because I trust that you will help me exterminate those who will use their gift for evil, and therefore pose a threat to the dragons' survival. I hope I was not wrong in my choosing.'  
'No, my lord. You were not.'  
'Good. We will fly to the boy's village now-'  
'My lord?' the Thunderer asks.  
'You dare interrupt me?!' snarls Furious, his eyes blazing with fire.  
'I am sorry, my lord. But what about your son? He will lead this army when you die.'  
'Are you suggesting that I am going to die?'  
'No, my lord.'  
'As for my son, he has not hatched yet, but I have put him in a place where the boy will never find him. For if he does, which he will not, he will use his gift to tame him, and... he will turn him against his father, and it will be the end for us... But, as I have said before, he will not.'  
'But why will the boy not find him, Furious?'  
'Because he will be too destroyed by grief to leave his village... and eventually, he will die from sadness...' Furious smiles evilly.  
'Right as always, my lord. Are we going to leave now?'  
In answer, Furious spreads his ragged, scarred blue wings, and takes off into the sky, the Thunderer and the other dragons of the army following behind him.


	2. Out of the Inferno

_"To see my village burned_, _my family_...taken..."

* * *

From the inferno that once was a boy's village, someone emerges- the only survivor of the massacre.

His face is charred and burnt, covered with ash from the fire, but tears of bitter sadness streak his face, too.  
He is muttering something, so quietly that only the devil-serpents, flying away, back to whichever hellish nest they came from, with their hearing, which is much better than the survivor's, can hear him- for his words are meant for their ears only to hear. _They_ are the reason why nothing else is around to hear him say these words.  
'_You will pay_..._You will pay_..._You will pay_...' he repeats over and over, almost chanting the words, which are building in volume and anger each time he repeats the words, his voice choked with ash and sadness.  
'_YOU WILL PAY_!' he finally screams, seizing his father's staff, and stabbing it at the sky, as if he can perhaps spear his family's spirits on the hook, as if he were fishing, and bring them back to him, to the earth, or tear the devil-serpents from the sky.  
Yes...how wonderful it would be, to tear them from the sky, to hear their cries of mercy...and mercy would be something that they would _definitely_ not get...  
To stab the hook of his father's staff into their throats, or their stomachs, as their claws did to his family...  
To see the blood pour out of them like water, like the blood of his family that now stained the bare ground, that, before the devil-serpents came, once had grass...  
The survivor's thoughts of revenge are interrupted by him feeling a small weight in the pocket of his bloodstained, charred and burnt furs.  
He pulls the object out of his pocket, and snarls, like the devil-serpents themselves, in anger.  
It is a book. A journal. A dragon journal.  
Tears of anger and sadness come to his eyes once again, as he remembers his father, the one who had gave him the staff, taking him dragon-watching.  
The survivor's father, and his son, had once loved dragons. His father used to joke, in the way he often did, that his son loved dragons more than he did his own father.  
_Not any more_, the survivor thinks.  
He rips the pages out of the journal, and in his maddened anger, he is under the illusion that the pages are the devil-serpents' wings.  
The pages flutter down to the scarred ground, and join his family in the inferno.  
It is not just a blazing funeral for his family. It is also a funeral for the survivor's love of dragons.  
And the birth of his hatred for them.  
Suddenly, a devil-serpent's shriek splits the night sky, which is red from the flames of what was once the survivor's village. The devil-serpent is red, too.  
The survivor immediately stands alert- as he is used to doing; he has been living in fear all his life- with his father's staff raised, to kill this oncoming devil-serpent.  
In his mind's eye, the survivor can see a picture of a dragon that looks much like this one, in his dragon journal. Quickly, for he knows he does not have much time before the devil-serpent strikes, hatefully, he identifies the devil-serpent as a Monstrous Nightmare.  
As the devil-serpent approaches, the survivor becomes frozen.  
Frozen in fear- an emotion he knows well.  
When the devil-serpent launches itself onto his arm, the pain unfreezes the survivor.  
'_NO_, _NO_, _NO_!' he screams, punching the devil-serpent, but it does not let go, putting its claws in front of the survivor's face, so that he can punch no more, ripping into his face, scarring him terribly- a reminder of what happened on this night.  
The survivor knows that he cannot punch the dragon anymore, and his attempts to do so before did not work, as the dragon did not let go then, and it will not let go now.  
Finally, the arm separates from his body, and he screams once more in pain.  
The devil-serpent promptly eats the arm, which is now in its mouth, and flies off, to join the other devil-serpents.  
The survivor does not even notice this- he is clutching his arm in pain, feeling like he will faint.  
Even so, he gains control of the small part of his brain that is not screaming, and commands it to make him stand up.  
He sways dizzily like a drunk person, but still manages it.  
In a zombie-like state, he puts one foot foward.  
But this moves the remaining arm which is clutching the other one, and a scream of pain echoes.  
Slowly, the survivor picks up his father's staff from the ground, which he had dropped when punching the devil-serpent.  
Suddenly, as he does this, he feels a sting in his stump- a different pain, but still pain.  
Once again, he sees in his mind's eye, the Monstrous Nightmare page in his dragon journal. He remembers that he labelled the drawing of the dragon, and sees the arrow pointing to the teeth. 'Bite slightly poisonous. The amount of poison injected into the bite depends on how much is needed to tear off fur or feathers from the prey.' the writing says.  
Poison. That is the sting in his stump. He guessed that tearing off a limb needed more bite-force than to tear off fur or feathers, and so more poison would be injected into the bite.  
He has not dared to look at his arm until now, terrified of what he might see.  
The arm, what is left of it, is in tatters. Disturbingly, he is reminded of what his old dragon toy looked like before he decided he was too old for toys, and threw it away.  
The devil-serpents had probably destroyed that, too.  
Trying not to think about the devil-serpents, but instead trying to think about his arm, he places his father's staff against his stump.  
He remembers what the village healer had taught him and the other boys. If you are poisoned, the best thing to do- although definitely not the most painless- is to cut off the area that is green, which is the poisoned area.  
Most of the boys had not been stupid or careless enough to get bitten by the captive Monstrous Nightmare, or shot by the spines of the Deadly Nadder, in Dragon Training. The survivor, was the top of the class in Dragon Training. Now, you might see that as a good thing, as indeed his father and mother had, but it was not. For the reason why he was top of the class, was because of his love of the dragons, he refused to kill them- instead, he trained them. But the massacre of his family and his village, and his ability to somehow have a way with the dragons, were the two things that turned him to evil.  
Despite desperately not wanting to cut off the rest of his arm, the survivor knows he has to, if he wants to live.  
And that is something that he does not want to do right now. _At least if I die from the poison_, _I will see my mother and father again_, the survivor thinks.  
That is another thought he tries not to think about, and is easily distracted from it by the pain of cutting off what remains of his arm, and his screams.  
He has turned his head the other way, so that he cannot see what he has done, but now he turns it back again, and immediately regrets doing so.  
Avoiding looking at the stump, he grabs his already bloodstained furs, and uses them to wipe the blood from the stump, so he is able to look at it without vomiting.  
When he is done, he notices that his arm is not in tatters anymore, just a clean stump.  
And he also discovers the pain in his arm has lessened slightly from removing the poisoned part, enough to start walking, albeit slowly.  
Using the hook of his father's staff as a replacement arm, he walks over to each of the weapons strewn about the ground, and hooks the handles. Then he plants the staff into the ground, and with his arm now free, grabs hold of as many weapons as he can.  
He makes his way over to the forge. His master, as he was his apprentice, is dead- killed by the devil-serpents as he fought alongside the survivor's father; he was not only the survivor's master, but the survivor's father's second-in-command, and best friend, too.  
The survivor goes over to the little corner of the forge that his master allowed him to have as his workshop, dumps all of the weapons there, and pushes them to one side.  
He sees the other book that he has; this one was not for dragon-watching, but for sketching his ideas for machines in. His fascination with mechanics became clear as he flicked through the pages of his book, trying to find a blank one, yet still staying on the pages with designs on for a few seconds, still fascinated, even though he had seen the designs many times.  
Grabbing a charcoal stick, which served as a pencil before such things were invented, he begins to draw on a blank page he has finally found.  
First, the shape of a hand. But where the fingers are meant to be, he instead draws claws.  
He shades the drawing in a texture that looks like metal. In fact, it _is_ metal.  
Once he is done, he retrivives the pile of weapons, and takes just one.  
He walks over to the blacksmith's fire, and places the wooden handle into it.  
After a few minutes, the handle starts to blacken, and falls off, onto the floor.  
Now only the metal blade remains of the weapon.  
He places the metal blade into the bellows, and after another few minutes, of pumping the bellows, he sees that the metal has melted down.  
Grabbing his master's blacksmith tongs, he grips the melted-down metal with them, and dips it into the slack tub, which was filled with water- his master must have left the forge when he saw that his father needed help.  
The metal cools down, but isn't yet cool enough to be handled by the survivor- his hands are scarred and burnt already, by the devil-serpents. He does not want them to be damaged any more.  
He transfers the metal to the anvil, and begins to pound it into shape. Eventually, the shape he wants is achieved. He repeats the process with the other weapons, until the hand is made- but it does not have claws yet.  
He makes holes in the hand for the claws, with the hook of his father's staff, and once he is done, returns to the pile of weapons, selecting a weapon with the smallest blade he can find, a dagger, and measures it against his finger.  
No. It is still longer than his finger. It needs to be the exact length of it.  
He grabs the tongs on the way to the blacksmith's fire, and grips the dagger. The handle starts to blacken, as he has seen many times, leaving only the metal. Now he holds the part of the dagger which is longer than his finger against the fire. It begins to glow red-hot, and eventually, drops onto the floor.  
He holds the remaining part of the dagger against his finger, with the tongs.  
The exact length.  
He puts the dagger down on the anvil for the time being, and with the tongs, picks up the piece of the dagger blade which fell onto the floor, carries it outside, and places it alongside the inferno that once was his village, but now, only a fireproof forge.  
Returning to the forge, he picks up the remaining part of the dagger on the anvil with the tongs, once again, but does not go over to the bellows. Instead he goes over to the grindstone, and proceeds to sharpen the remaining part of the dagger into a curved point.  
A claw, which he places into the first of the holes in the hand.  
Experimentally, he brushes the side of his face with the claw. A trickle of blood runs down, onto the floor.  
He smiles.  
Then he repeats the process; luckily, he has enough daggers to make the rest of the claws.  
Fixing the last claw onto the hand, he holds it up to the early dawn sunlight, which is streaming through the forge. The claws gleam cruelly.  
He fixes his new arm onto the stump of the old one. It fits perfectly, and when he walks around to test it, it does not fall off.  
He takes a last look at the forge, before walking out.  
He cannot bear to look at the remains of his village as he walks through it. Instead, he looks down at the ground, and sobs.  
Rain falls down from the sky, as if the gods and his family are crying with him.  
He continues walking, until he reaches the edge of the village, as this is the last time he will see it.  
Slowly, he turns his head away, and walks on, but to where, he does not know.  
But this is not the only thing Drago is walking away from. He is walking away from the path of good...  
...And into evil.


End file.
